The next minutes went by slower than pouring molasses. Catriona sat on the bed in silence, waiting for me to say something. Anything. But the words wouldn't come. And when they did, my throat restricted sending a sharp pain down to my stomach. The tears that formed in my eyes blurred my vision, which in a way was good because it meant I couldn't see the guilt I hoped was on Catriona's face.

"Em, please say something," my friend—although I wasn't sure if I wanted to call her that anymore—pleaded. She reached out a slender hand toward me but I snatched mine away.

"There is nothing I can say to you right now, Catriona." Ice crept into my voice. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that maybe it would right all the wrongs of the past few minutes. Maybe this was a dream. A really bad dream. If I opened them again, it would be me and Catriona laying on the bed again, gushing over my time in Scotland.

But instead I was met again with Catriona's pleading face. Pink tinged her cheeks as if she felt shameful, guilty for spilling the secret she had been keeping from me.

Rightfully so.

"Just so you know," she said quietly, "Fionn had nothing to do with this."

I scoffed. "Right." With my luck, she was probably saying that to make me feel better. I got up from the bed and began throwing things into my suitcase.

"Em, what are you—"

"It's Emilie!" I yelled at her. "You don't get to call me 'Em' anymore." It was the same thing I'd told Fionn when we were fighting before we got together. A childish thing to do, but I didn't care. I'd been played.

Oh God, had this all been a lie? Had it all been a ruse to see if Fionn could land the heartbroken American fresh out of an 8-year long relationship?

"Emilie." Her voice softened. "Please don't blame Fionn for this. Blame me, okay?"

"So you didn't know about me and Kyle breaking up before I sent the email reply to you in December?" I asked.

Catriona shook her head. "No! I swear I didn't know." She paused, biting her lip. "Well actually, I did know. You'd changed your Facebook status and I hadn't heard anything from you so I put two and two together and...Emilie, I'm so sorry. I just knew how hard you work and thought you might deserve a break. I had no idea about Kyle which is why I never thought this trip would have unintended consequences."

"Then you just lied to me."

Tears brimmed her eyes. "I-I'm so so sorry, Emilie."

I eyed her carefully.

"Please," she begged me.

Maybe her heart had been in the right place. Maybe she really didn't think that I'd fall for Fionn. But why...

"Why didn't you just tell me that?" My voice softened only slightly. My body itched to get out of this room, to confront Fionn and find out the truth. "Why did you feel like you had to hide it? And why not tell Fionn?"

She ran a hand through her hair, tugging on the ends. "I wanted it to be something special, and it backfired. I didn't tell Fionn because, well, I didn't think it would make a difference. He's here to help train the renters and it wasn't going to be any different except that you have more experience than most. If anything, I thought maybe you'd get a friend out of the trip since I couldn't be here most of the time. And you both deserved to find a friend."

Silence fell between us, like an ocean separating the continents, and I felt further away from her in both emotion and physicality.

"For what it's worth," she continued, "I'm not sorry I did it. But I am sorry for the trouble it caused."

I stood up and inhaled sharply before letting out a loud exhale. "I need to go for a walk. I...I can't be in here anymore. My fingers curled around the handful of the suitcase and I dragged it behind me down the stairs.

I didn't stop until I reached Fionn's place next door, I banged my fist against it until he opened it. Fionn frowned, running a hand through his already tousled hair. The top button of his shirt was unbuttoned.

"Em, what's going on?" His gaze traveled over my face before landing behind me on my suitcase. "What happened?"

Before I could stop, tears flowed down my cheeks and I rammed my head into his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, soothing me with his hands in my hair.

"C-Cat did this. She did all of this," I mumbled against his chest.

"Did what?" he asked.

I pulled away. "She sent me the ticket. Sh-she set all of this up. You, me. My trip to Scotland. That's why..." I inhaled sharply. "That's why I didn't have a regular application. It was an inside job, as they'd say." I let out a half-hearted chuckle. I was an idiot for not seeing it all before.

Fionn raised his eyebrows. "My sister played matchmaker to get us together?"

"Yes. No...I don't know." I let out a sigh. "She says it was unintentional but it seems pretty intentional to me."

"Here, come get settled inside." He picked up my suitcase and led me into the flat. "Is the suitcase your way of asking if you can stay with me until the fifth?"

I paused in the middle of the foyer. "Um, actually I was going to just, er, get a hotel." It would be better that way, I tried to convince myself. I couldn't stay with Fionn if I wanted to get on that plane in a few days. But I also wanted comfort, and Fionn was the only one within a reasonable distance who might be able to provide that.

"Oh. Um, that's fine too. I do have a guest room if you'd rather not pay for a hotel," he said, scratching the back of his head.

He was right. God, why did I doubt him?

I curled into his side again and he rubbed his hands over my back for comfort. "Thank you, Fionn. Seriously, thank you for everything."

"Em, that's what I'm here for." He kissed my hair. "Come, go get settled into the guest room. Down the hall, first door on the left. Then we can sit here and just talk, aye?"

I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him. "Yes. Thank you."

I wandered down the hall with my things and got settled in, nothing bothering to fully unpack. When I returned, Fionn was sitting on the sofa sipping from a beer.

He handed me a glass of red wine. "I'll order pizza for dinner if you'd like. Thought we could just relax tonight, maybe you can tell me what happened with my sister."

I nodded and gratefully accepted the glass, gulping down a large sip. "That would be nice." I curled up next to him, tucking my legs under my body.

"If it means anything, I had no idea my sister was trying to set us up," Fionn said, running his fingers through my hair. "It wouldn't change—doesn't change—anything, though. I still want to be with you. None of it negates my feelings for you."

I wiped my hand across my cheeks. "Even if her intentions were good...I don't know. I feel like this whole time, I've been lied to. In all the time I've known her, she never told me she was your sister until I got here. That should've been my first clue."

"Why is that a bad thing?" he asked.

"It's not, I just wish she would've told me."

"Would it change anything?"

I sat up. "What do you mean?"

Fionn set his beer down on a coaster. "If you had known I was Catriona's brother, would it change anything with us?"

"That's not the point—"

"Answer the question, Em." Fionn's expression changed. "I just told you that even if I knew my sister was trying to set us up, it wouldn't change anything between us. What about you? Does this change anything?"

"No, it doesn't." I laced our fingers together and sighed. "Look, this whole idea of possibly being set up doesn't sit well with me. I didn't want to find anyone until I was ready after Kyle. And I've done the whole 'set up' thing before. I-I couldn't bear the thought of ending up in the same boat of heartbreak again."

"Not every guy is an arse like Kyle," Fionn argued. "So what if Cat set us up? We're together, right? We like each other, we came to each other at our own time. Isn't that enough?"

I stayed silent. I didn't know what to think right now.

"Maybe it's good I'm going back to the states," I murmured. "Maybe we should go back to being just friends."

Fionn stiffened next to me. "Emilie, come on you don't mean that."

Thud, thud, thud went my beating heart. My trip to Scotland was coming to an end. As much as it would hurt, maybe it was best I left the way I came: single.

"I...I don't know." I tucked myself further into the couch.

So much for this not changing anything between us.

"Maybe you're right." Fionn glared at me, pulling away and leaving a cold space between us. "This was always better off as something temporary, right?"

"Fionn, that's not—"

He got up from the couch and his features softened as his gaze roamed over my face. "Emilie, I don't want you to end your trip with us fighting. So please can we just...can we just not fight tonight? If we're going to go back to the way it was, I don't want it to end this way."

"Fionn," I breathed, brushing my fingers against the shadow on his cheeks. I love you. I don't want to lose you. "I don't want it to end at all."

"Neither do I." His voice rumbled deeply and his eyes locked onto mine in a desirous gaze.

I pressed my lips against his, washing away the hurt and bringing forward the hunger.

He rested his hands on my hips, pulling my body closer before slipping his fingers inside my shirt to rub light circles against my skin. Desperately, I clutched at the fabric of his t-shirt.

I didn't want to let go.

I longed to be his, my mind fighting over my body, for as long as I lived.

Three more days. Then, until we meet again.

I could only hope.

***

The plane ride back to the states dragged on. The whole time I spent staring out the window into the vast atmosphere and twirling my claddagh ring around my finger. My thumb pushed it up over my knuckles. The point of the heart faced inward, indicating that my heart was captured by another.

Except now it wasn't.

Fionn and I slept together the night I barged over to his flat to tell him that Catriona was responsible for me coming to Scotland and probably for setting us up.

Then we spent the next few days pretending to avoid one another because neither of us could work up the courage to actually talk over everything. It was all stolen glances over the top of the counter and "please see when this novel is coming off of backorder" and quiet assessments of one another while we hosted three different book signings in a row just to fill up the space and remove any spare moments of time where we could lose ourselves with each other.

I flipped the ring over just as the plane hit a bout of turbulence. My heart lurched as the ring fell out of the grasp and onto the plane floor.

"No, no, no!" I muttered, undoing my seatbelt and leaning forward to search for it. That tiny sucker was nowhere to be found.

"Everything alright, miss?" the flight attendant asked. She towered over me when I glanced up.

"Um, I dropped my ring," I said. "It's really important to me and I was stupid and it fell off and—" I stopped, realizing my voice was rising to a higher octave. "I'm sorry."

She wasn't the one I needed to apologize to, Fionn was. Everything was so perfect, and I went and found an excuse to ruin it. And now we were worlds apart.

"Is this it?" the voice from the passenger in front of my row asked. They turned around, holding up the silver ring between their fingers.

I blinked as realization hit me. "Asher?"

He smiled. "Emilie, hey. Um, so is this the ring?"

"Y-yes, thank you." I took the ring back from him and slipped it securely onto my finger. "What are you doing here? I thought you lived in Scotland?"

Asher laughed. "I do, but my company is sending me on a business trip to the states. I have a layover at Dulles then I catch my next flight to LA in about a day or so."

"That's cool. What are you doing in LA?"

"Um, architecture actually," he replied. Fionn and I, that's how we met. We took a class together at university and we both decided to pursue this path. 'Course, he's been doing a lot less with it ever since him and Natalie split up."

"Right." I moved back into the seat to avoid blocking the path of the flight attendant who decided to at that moment come around with our first meal.

"Well listen, since I know you're in the states, why don't we grab a bite after we land?" Asher suggested once the aisle was clear and we could face each other again.

Heat rose to my cheeks. "Thanks, but um, my friends are actually picking me up and I'm helping them prepare for a wedding so I don't think I can. And I...I don't think it's such a good idea." Because of Fionn, I wanted to add.

He cleared his throat and nodded. "Understandable." He paused as if he was going to say something else but decided against it. He moved back into his seat and I went back to staring out the window beyond the passenger to my right.

By the time the plane landed, exhaustion from the last few weeks plus the flight piled up and now weighed down heavily on me. As I walked down the jetway to head toward baggage claim, I felt someone tap my shoulder.

"Hey," I said as Asher fell into step beside me.

"Hey. I'm really glad we got to meet that day in the bar," he said.

I laughed. "Yes, a fond memory. You, me, and a drunk Fionn between us. A memorable night indeed."

Asher smirked. "You'd think his Scottish blood would make him less of a lightweight. Anyway, I wanted to give you my number. No strings attached, just in case you ever wanna talk."

"Thanks." I handed him my phone to enter his number then sent him a text letting him know it was from me and who I was.

We reached baggage claim and Brena squealed when she saw me, waving her hands and jumping up and down. Jared was next to her, grinning.

Tears formed in my eyes. I was home. My friends were here. Everything would be back to normal soon.

"Bye, Asher," I said.

"See you around, Emilie." He gave me a salute and started to walk away.

"Wait—" I called after him.

"Yeah."

"Um. If you...if you see Fionn, or talk to him, or whatever, could you..." the words wouldn't escape my mouth.

Could you tell him I miss him? That I love him? That I regret letting him go? All were true. Any of them would work. But I couldn't say them.

Asher nodded. "Yeah. And, um, for whatever it's worth, I like you two together a lot. I hope things will work out."

"Me too."

I rolled my carry-on luggage over to where Brena and Jared were waiting for me with open arms. Jared spun me around and Brena hugged me so tight I thought my lungs were going to explode.

But I didn't care.

"How are you doing?" Brena asked, concern etched over her features.

I sighed and hugged her tighter. "Let's just go home."